Of Frost, Fire, and Folklore

Ash scowled at his sleek black laptop on the desk two weeks after Liora destroyed an island for him. She’d been cagey whenever he’d asked after it.

Where she’d hidden it while raising Hell. He chuckled slightly, eyes narrowing on the dark splotches marring his keyboard and screen.

The machine hummed to life fine, slower than it used to. Underneath the familiar scent of silicon and his faded touch was the unmistakable, cloying stench of infernal blood—sulphur and spoiled sun-dried blackberries—Barbatos, he assumed.

A growl climbed up his throat, lodging like a bone spur in his vocal cords. The urge to wipe it clean soon transformed into a desire to destroy the machine. The demon’s blood had ruined it.

It still worked. Although it only let him open the encrypted file he’d created for recording Liora’s past. He had everything saved on hard drives and thumb drives.

The violation rankled him, gums burning with the weight of his fangs, as his mind devised extensive ways to return the favor.

He didn’t look up as Liora drifted into the room; the shadows deepened and wreathed around her as she poured herself a healthy tumbler of whisky.

“Do you want to explain,” he said, voice deceptively light, “why my hard drive smells like a cryptomancer’s bad day?”

From his periphery, he saw her pause, a crystal glass poised halfway to her lips. “He found your island,” she said, her tone implying the answer was self-evident. “He said your firewalls were… quaint.”

“He used blood magic on a three-thousand-dollar machine.”

She went so still he thought she’d turned to stone. Her scent was full of dark fruit and the soft tang of clementine that signalled she was bored.

This was a new emotion for her, and he usually paid for it. He smothered a smirk and waited her out.

“And you’re not rotting in a lab.” She deigned to spit as she took a slow sip. “I’d call it a favourable exchange rate.”

Ash finally looked at her, a slow grin spreading as something warm unfurled in his chest. “Just for that, you’re buying the next one. And dinner. Again.”

She arched a cool brow, head tilting as she appraised him, heartbeat steadier than he’d heard it in weeks. Her lips curved, the barest hint of a smile. “Still keeping score, leech?”

“Always, Red. Always.”

Five Years Later — Glen Affric Forest in Scotland at Midnight — The Score Rises Frost glittered on the ancient Caledonian pines reaching their clawed hands to the mouldering heavens as the full Wolf moon spilled silver over the world. No mortal light pollution marred the night here.

An ocean of stars watched on as great Oaks groaned in the winter wind. Their roots gnarled, relentless where they broke through the earth. Their serpentine patterns glazed in shimmering ice.

The air around Liora stunk of hunter blood, victory, and peat smoke, shadows still thrashing the air. She’d shaken Ash off her tail the night before. Taunted him with droplets of her blood like breadcrumbs dotted through the highlands.

They’d dismantled the Scottish hunter cell within days of arrival. She burnt their temple only an hour earlier. Now a new game was well under way. One she’d longed for.

A game where the only stakes were pleasure, no rules—the merciless grind of hunger and his need to possess her was all that mattered. She grinned as she carved a sigil into the oak.

She pricked her index finger with a claw and let a black droplet drip into the mark. It sizzled, glowing scarlet. The bond in her chest grew tight and hot as its meaning pulsed.

Come find me, leech.

Then she grit her teeth, heart thumping like the feet of the terrified hare racing away from her. Her burnt-sugar scent flooded the air as she clawed at her own shoulders. Pain seared, turning to arousal as her blood slid down her spine.

It was the only scent trail he’d get. He’d see it as a dare.

Good, she thought.

He took too long to track me. Now he has to work for it.

Her demon agreed; oooh, yes! Let him earn it. He loves our rage.

Liora hummed, bare feet curling into the frosted, crunchy layer atop the forest floor. She wore little but a vintage nightgown. A master had woven the black lace, which edged the fine lilac silk, by hand, and she had watched.

The diaphanous fabric fluttered around her calves as her muscles coiled, the ache of self-inflicted hunger and the promise of pain burning within her. She summoned her shadows and phased into the heart of the woods.

Her last words to Ash three days ago still resonated in her mind.

“We’ve done this before, but this time you don’t have a fan club hunting you. The rules are the same. You’re not allowed to use your tech. You can’t cheat using the bond.”

“What do I get when I win?”

She smiled wickedly. “If you catch me, I’ll let you feast. Fail, and I will leave you there to gnaw on the pinecones.”

“You’ll beg me to catch you long before the bond yanks us back together. You know you can’t run far anymore, Red…”

Ash arrived mere minutes after her shadows swallowed her. Shirtless, fangs out, black veins spiralled up his torso, neck, and webbed his glinting silver eyes.

His pupils had already fragmented as burnt brown sugar hit him. He scanned the army of trees standing before him. Pine resin, freshly turned earth, and iron taunted his senses as he inhaled deeply. Her blood had spilled here.

His gaze zeroed in on the opalescent black splodges marring the frozen ground. His mouth watered, teeth hurting with the need to taste it fresh from her vein. She hadn’t run too far from him while laying her false trails for him to chase.

She’d needed a hobby after the hunters disbanded. She kept a closer eye on all magical creatures, but that grew dull, too.

This was the outcome. Starving them both for three days stretched him to his limits. She’d just be feeling it. In a few more hours, she would be as hungry as he.

Her nature kept her coming back for more, no matter how hard she tried to resist it. She didn’t need protection, but he thought of it as his right to keep her alive.

He never knew whether his chest would expand. That relieved reaction after taking a deep breath shouldn’t exist for him, but it was there whenever she accepted his attempts to care for her without a fight. Her heart thudded gently against his skin when it went down like that.

The other reaction was just as fun. She’d claw and scream and threaten him to flush his tongue down the toilet, locking herself in their room to hide from him. To push him away.

Again and again and again. He gave himself to her for free anyway.

She would never believe it, but he thought she deserved it. So he played her games according to her set rules. He inched closer to the edge of the forest she’d vanished into, gaze catching on the crimson rune she’d engraved in a tree’s trunk.

Uruz.

She’d taught him the basics of what they meant and how to use them. This one meant strength, raw primal power, and untamed fire. Or a powerful surge of passion.

Fitting, he thought, a bit on the nose, though, Red.

Ash touched the glowing mark, fingertip coming away bloody. He licked it, finding the heat had already faded, and she’d gotten a good head start.

“You’re going to regret that, demon,” he said, whispering it to the stars before he launched himself into the trees. She’d said not to use the bond to find her… it was impossible not to feel the hot pull behind his ribs when he ran the right way.

Pines blurred in his periphery as he flew through the forest, leaping over fallen, rotted trunks and barely avoiding getting smacked in the face by low-hanging branches. His ears strained.

The noise of insects crawling and wings flapping didn’t interrupt the hushed silence hanging over the trees. He grinned as he found the first clue. A shred of her dress had snagged on a thorned bush.

He grabbed it, held it to his nose and breathed it in. Her need had soaked the fabric scrap. He was about to turn west and see where it took him, but movement from the corner of his eye had his head whipping round.

Right ahead, a shadowed figure flitted between the trees, laughter ringing out. Ash’s muscles tensed, springing forward as he gave chase. The bond was a compass of frost and fever inside him. She was fast.

The rushing river’s racket filled his ears. He ran under an enormous willow tree. Its drooping bare branches tickled the frozen earth as it crunched under his boots. He slowed as a rapid heartbeat broke through the noise of the water.

His gaze snapped up. Liora’s shadows had braided through the branches she balanced on.

“You’re too slow—clumsy. The forest eats faster predators.”

He lunged. She dropped. Claws raked his chest, pain stung as black blood beading the edges of the wounds. He growled, trying to grab her by the horns, but she was already gone.

Disappearing into a thicket as arousal flickered through him. He spoke to the trees.

“That’s one, Red.”

He followed her. Making a hard turn left when the bond went cold. Moonlight cast the world in shades of grey and silver and black as he tracked her to a rocky outcrop.

Her scent clung to the stone as he touched it and snuck along the side of it. Copper shone under the moon a second before he cornered against the rock. His fingers barely wrapped around her scalding throat, pulse rabbiting under his thumb.

She twisted. Her knee hammered into his gut. He cursed, doubling over, hand covering his stomach as the pain radiated.

“You hunt like a boy. You’re letting hunger control you. Use your cunning.”

His cock hardened as he grabbed her thigh. Fingers bruising, frost biting her overheated flesh. Her hiss made him grin as he tried to haul her back. She surged toward him, biting his arm.

Venom scorched his veins as she melted into shadow. He drew in a taut breath, trying to calm the crawling under his skin at losing when he had her so close.

“Two,” he muttered and kept running.

Dawn painted the horizon red; frost swirled up his arms as the bond became a white-hot brand behind his sternum. He chased her to another glade. He slowed to a prowl as she panted, back pressed to a lightning-scarred oak.

The first rays of daylight drenched her torn nightgown. Her aroused scent thickened as he drew closer, eyes molten as they tracked him.

Her fervent heartbeat pounded in his ears as he said, “No more running.”

Her claws lengthened and flexed, shadows coiling like vipers ready to strike. “Come take it, leech.”

They charged at the same time, colliding like rival gods. Fangs met claws, frost crashed into fire—both a blur of tangled limbs crashing to the forest floor.

She tore his pants; he ripped her nightgown. Exposing her pale breast to his teeth. He bit her hard and savoured her gasp as her back arched. She shoved him away just as her blood hit his tongue, and he let out a relieved moan.

Liora’s breath serrated her throat, fire eating her alive inside as they fought. Her talons raked across his stomach. His snarl only made her fight harder.

She lost track of the blows. Hers and his. The wet smack of flesh hitting flesh, her cunt slick and searing against his thigh when he jammed it between hers.

She drew blood, and he licked it from her knuckles. He tried to get her in a headlock. She dodged it, losing a few strands of hair as his fingers glanced off her horns.

Heat and hunger and want and urgency ruled her as she sprung up and aimed a kick at his jaw. He was faster. She couldn’t track him as he jumped up and grabbed her by the arm.

Slamming her into a tree. Bark cracked and crumbled to the floor as she laughed. Ribs aching as pain bled to pleasure and the emptiness inside her gnawed too deep. She let him knock her onto her back.

Tree roots, heather, and icy grass cradled them. She reared up and bit his collarbone. He grunted, pinning her hips to the ground. Frost ate through her flimsy attire as her pulse went wild and his gaze focused on it.

“Yield,” he ordered, that subsonic growl reverberated from his mouth and pooled in the hollow of her throat, body going limp despite her words.

“Make me.” She spat venom in his face.

He smiled slowly, hips grinding against hers. He ripped her nightgown off. Her shadows shrieked as he hauled her up. Only to flip her, pressing her face into the cold loam. Her darkness went quiet, writhing in the air as though torn between attack and arousal.

She went rigid, cunt clenching hard as Ash’s cock filled her in one brutal thrust. She couldn’t make a sound, mouth gaping and eyes hazed by lust as he took her like an animal.

Her flushed face breathed hard as small stones and twig shards poked into her skin. She bucked her hips as he dragged a glacial hand up her spine and fisted in her hair.

Whining as wetness soaked her inner thighs, and her inner walls softened for him. He fucked her raw, forest floor shredding beneath them. Her rattling heartbeat was the metronome to his ruthless pace.

Cock splitting her in two as her claws buried in the dirt to anchor herself. Every retreat had her cunt clamping down to stop him from leaving. Every rough slide back inside shunted her along the grass.

Peaked breasts abraded by the forest debris added a delicious prickling layer of sensation to his onslaught. Her mental barrier fell down as heat and tension began tightening and twisting inside her.

Tell me to stop.

His strained internal voice rumbled through her skull. She steepened her arch under him, hips rolling into his next harsh thrust, making them both groan.

She freed a hand from the dirt and reached back, clawing him, where? She didn’t know, but grinned as he swore and she crooned, “Try and make me say—” Her statement dissolved into a sound of discontent as he pulled out of her dripping cunt. She bared her teeth, inner walls fluttering as he dragged her up by the hair.

The fiery pain licking across her scalp stole a moan from her, so wet her thighs slipped and slid as she clenched them. He turned her to face him and pushed her back down.

Her claws embedded in his shoulders as one leg hooked his waist, the other folded and her knee rested against his shoulder. He plunged into her. A strange, wild sound left him and made her shadows purr as her cunt clasped him.

“Three days of your scent in my head. Three days of this hunger.” He paused just to slam into her so hard she choked. “You thought this was a game… it’s a fucking exorcism.”

She sobbed and lifted her head to expose her neck. Tension began twisting tauter inside her. Her shadows fractured, screaming as he took her with a feral, snarling rhythm as his mind dropped dark promises into hers.

It’s too late to offer it now. I’m taking it, Red. I’m taking every drop you owed me while you were running.

She whined. But she still fought him, talons scoring his back, tongue sharper than a scalpel as she cut him down to size. Still, her moans, her body’s undulating, involuntary movement and her possessive, dripping hold on his cock drowned her threats.

The forest blurred as he fucked her into the earth, back getting scratched now, hips snapping to meet his deep lunges. His blood perfumed the air she gasped in. She siphoned his pleasure, letting it merge with hers and feeding it back to him through the bond.

She watched as his mercurial eyes widened, hips stuttering before he got a hold of himself, and he growled her name in a tone she felt like his blunt nails raking her skin. It only heightened the mass of pleasure bordering on pain as it tightened within her.

Her delighted howl, claws falling from his shoulders and burying in the soil again, its petrichor scent blending with their shared arousal, so potent it was almost suffocating. Her heart kept pounding, running faster than it had all year.

Blood searingly hot and blacker than sin, roared in her veins—waiting for him to take it.

His voice was a guttural, dangerous thing as he said, “Look at you taking everything I’ve got.” He panted, gelid breath caressing her heavy breasts as she bowed off the ground. “This is what you wanted, Liora. This is what you starved us for. You perfect, vicious little thing.”

The noise that left her throat was half a cry of outrage, mostly a shout of encouragement as he struck that spot that always stole a wail from her throat. She couldn’t breathe properly; the air got trapped between her mouth and her lungs.

It hitched with every failed inhale. She got her legs off his shoulder, winding them around his waist to draw him further in. A tendril of shadow curled around his cock, tiny pulses of compression and warmth to make him as wild as she felt.

He chuckled, fingers blooming bruised poppies into her waist. His winter fever and her infernal heat battled, steam hazing from her skin where they were joined.

Release barrelled closer with every glide of his thick cock, cunt clenching and relaxing, stomach tensing as tension climbed too high. Her pulse throbbed, jittering in her neck.

She freed her hands from the ground and clasped his face, pulling his mouth to her throat. Giving a broken cry as his fangs at last pierced her vein. Her blood flooded his tongue, thick with power and desire, as her venom-drenched molten cunt engulfed his cock.

He groaned into her skin. Muscles jumped and bunched under her talons as they sliced his sides. Ice bled from his teeth onto her skin, pleasure following behind it. She didn’t know if he had said the words aloud or in her head. Too lost in sensation and heat to care.

“Mine. Your fire. Your venom—even your end. It’s all mine.”

Liora clung to him, voice a broken hymn, dancing on the edge of an orgasm that seemed annihilating.

“More—Ash, please…more”

He gave it to her. Frost crawled up her thighs, tempering her wildfire as he drank and fucked her harder, feeding on her pleasure as much as he fed on her blood. Her entire being drew too tight, skin stretching until it seemed as if it wouldn’t fit her right once this was over.

Every pore splayed wide and awaited his icy touch, sweat trailing down her neck. His arms slid under her sweaty back, fingers splaying wide, snow biting her oversensitive skin as he sat up with her in his lap. His name tripped off her tongue in a litany of begging.

She didn’t know whether it was a plea for more or less, or for the orgasm about to devour her whole. His sandstone voice spoke into her throat. The sound vibrated along her collarbones and shivered down her spine.

“Scream, Red. I want the forest to know who’s fucking you. I need the ghosts of the hunters to hear it.”

Her cunt clamped down as his command rumbled through her. It was a low tide pulling her under, salt and hunger, no air left to resist. Release hung over her like a noose she’d gladly slipped into.

Impaled on his cock, helpless to the tide of pleasure he incited as she moved with him, throaty cries tore from her as he thrust up into her. He lifted his head, black blood slicking his plush lips as he kissed her hard enough to bruise.

Stubble scratched her mouth raw. She stole his breath for herself, still siphoning every drop of pleasure. Her agonised whine as she dangled from the precipice of her release made him break away.

Eyes fragmented, rabid as they studied her flushed, frustration-contorted face. Then he was everywhere—hands buried in her hair, mouth on her horns, frost fusing their sweat-slicked skin.

Bolts of pleasure shot from her horns as his teeth marked one, going straight to her swollen clit, a shadow thread teasing it, too. Drowning her so thoroughly, every breath was as if she were breathing in molasses.

The pleasure and tension coiling inside her crested too high, overloading them both as the silent hum of their bond became a live-wire of sensation. Her spine arched, limbs trembling as it swept through her.

Between his frozen need and her boiling hunger, it was too much for one body to contain. Everything poured across the bridge of the bond. Waves of sensation rolled through them, minds pressed together, her wordless scream pierced the air.

His silent howl echoed in her head as his frost flurried into her veins, and her inferno smothered his senses. She came as the parasitic loop finally, perfectly closed. Both of them were shaking, fingers grasping at each other.

Shadows wove themselves into a shroud around them, keeping them hidden from any mortal eyes that might stumble across them. Her breathing sawed from her, heart jumping like coins in a shaken fist, his fractured eyes locked on her.

Blood dripped from his bite in her neck as he buried his face in it, inhaling her scent like a lifeline as the stunning, silent aftermath of a shared lightning strike flickered between them.

Time fell away into the moss. The forest still held its breath as the aftershocks died out. Wetness soaked her thighs, cunt still fluttering around when the ability to speak returned. The sun had fully risen after they’d collapsed onto the ruined forest floor.

She lay beside him, his fingers wrapped around her wrist, thumb circling her pulse as it gradually slowed. The silver VII brand on his scarred wrist had lost its last thorn only months earlier. His free hand traced the new scratches she’d left behind, shadows and frost working together to heal the wounds.

His smug, rough voice trickled like cool honey into her ear. “The next time you want a rematch, just ask. My back can’t take another century of this.”

Liora didn’t look at him, still catching her breath, lungs burning even as a tiny smile lit her face.

“Your back is fine. Your ego is the problem.” She closed her eyes for a second, meeting his as she opened them. “You tracked the third turn wrong. I was behind the willow the whole time. You thought I wouldn’t be there again.”

Her lips twitched to grin as his black chuckle resounded. “Stop lying. I let you have the willow. I was busy planning how I’d make you scream when I caught you at the oak.”

A genuine, tired laugh slipped free of her teeth. It made him go preternaturally still. “Arrogant leech.”

His voice was quiet, softer than she’d heard it in a while as he pulled her frost-nipped body against his. Arms like iron bands around her, shadows shackled his ankles.

“ Your arrogant leech. Is the score settled?”

Twigs and dried leaves and his blood matted in her messy hair as she rested her head on his freezing chest, listening to the silent heart under her ear. Her chest ached, claws nicking his skin, as his hands smoothed down her abraded back.

“For now.”

A Decade After That — The Manuscript The leather-bound volume was heavy on the desk as he set it down. Breath held, muscles tense as she stilled, black eyes locked on the cover. The weight of the words it held might just get him killed.

The book contained five hundred years of Liora’s carefully stolen memories. Pieced together from her reluctant whispers, Barbatos’ ledgers—he quite liked the crypto-mancer. Creepy bastard, but he was good at what he did—and the scars on her own skin.

He had written everything he’d compiled since they’d met. Intending for it to last forever.

Ash said nothing. This wasn’t a time for taunts or clever comments. He stepped back into the shadows by the window of their latest home, watching the first snow falling over a world they no longer had to burn.

Liora stared at the gleaming title, heart in her throat, tooled in gold: Velthara.

Her name. Her true name only he could wield. She had known he was up to something, but the understanding of what it was almost knocked her out of her rigid chair.

He’d carved her truth into the universe, and she’d given him all the secrets with which to do it. There was no photo on the cover.

He’d added a small oval mirror instead. Her heart spasmed, jaw tightening, eyes nipping as heat spread behind them.

Her fingers trembled. She should be furious with him. She’d erased it for a reason. But the terrifying, exhilarating weight of being seen and heard suffocated all thoughts of maiming him.

He’d never seen her as a monster, as a myth. He’d always looked at her as if she were something to be recorded and remembered. Her story. It was theirs now.

She didn’t open it. She didn’t need to. Its very existence was the final, silent vow. The last brand she’d ever know. VII—no longer a thing of survival, betrayal, and loneliness.

He’d transformed it into a ledger of witness and trust and violent knowing. The golden VIII seemed to warm on her collarbone as she stared at that book.

“Hubris still rules you, leech,” she whispered, her voice thick and buckling on the word ‘leech.’

He remained cloaked in her shadows. She knew he smirked at her, felt it in her bones.

“It always will, Red.”

A Hundred Years Later “Are they real like mum says? Or is she just trying to scare me?” A young witch asked her grandmother as they huddled around the roaring hearth in her cottage.

Flames licked the surrounding stone black, embers and wood popped and sparked. Smoke stained their clothes and the air they breathed as they spoke in hushed whispers. The dark room was lit only by the fire.

The old woman chuffed a laugh, gnarled hands tensing in her lap. Her heart raced at the question, a sour taste filling her mouth.

“Oh, they’re very real. The demon almost ended our line to save her vampire lover. Now… now they leave us alone if we leave them alone.”

The young girl, only thirteen and just coming into her powers, stared hungrily. Earthen eyes begging for more. The grandmother sighed, glancing around the cottage, the hair on her nape lifting as she gestured for her charge to speak.

“Did they love each other then? Did they get married?”

The grandmother hesitated, ribs aching as the breath left her in a rush. “Love? No. Love is quiet and safe. What they have—it’s a war even hell can’t stomach.”

She paused, voice lowering to a mutter even mice struggled to hear. “Marriage can be broken. They—they merged, using blood magic no one else could survive. They became one monster in two bodies. Unable to be parted, a fusion that means neither can think or feel without the other hearing or experiencing it.”

Her granddaughter shuddered, tawny face twisting. “That doesn’t sound good.”

The older witch barked a laugh. Head shaking, eyes darting to the thick shadows clinging to the room’s corners. The smell of incense, herbs, and anointed clove oil hung heavy in the atmosphere from their earlier spellwork lesson.

“To us or anyone else, death would be a kinder fate. For them? It’s probably the most romantic thing they could do.” She rose slowly to her feet, joints cracking and hurting as she ushered her granddaughter to bed.

Her stiff legs twinged as she walked behind the childs slight form until they reached her bedroom door. “It’s better not to speak of devils so late, they might hear us. Leave them to their war games. We protect our own.”

She ushered the young girl into the room, sending her to bed. The elderly witch’s hands made the sign of the cross as the door snapped shut.

“May they never grow bored of each other. The world couldn’t withstand it…” she whispered, a prayer she repeated nightly, before turning in herself.

Somewhere in the deepest eternal dark, the shadows laughed.